As the rover Curiosity descended to the surface of Mars, the heat shield that protected it from the heat of atmospheric entry was ejected while still high above the rusty plains. Cameras pointed downward captured images of the heat shield as it fell away, and folks at JPL put together this short video of it:

The descent timelapse they released before – part of which is posted above – was only in thumbnail quality. The whole thing was captured in glorious high definition, and will be released later at some point. NASA announced this at their press conference earlier today.

Bleh, the images from the mast camera were FAR better!
Though it DID seem familiar. It looks nearly identical to my mental image of the worst possible vacation spot. No visible life, no useful air, dust and rocks only, cold…
Yep! Great spot to send a robot, nowhere NEAR a vacation destination!
Yet…

@13 Ken
The SkyCrane was needed because of the weight of the rover, which is about a ton.
And dust is not such a problem for Curiosity since it runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Hence no solar panels that can be covered with dust.
See Wiki for more on that:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

#14 SkyGazer and #13 different Ken,
The rocket-powered descent and landing were necessary because of the weight, but the need to separate the rockets from the lander with 25 feet of cable was attributed to dust. Since the rover must be tolerant of dust storms, and we saw plenty of dust being kicked up under the rover in the landing video, the simplistic “We need to drop it on a crane so it doesn’t get dusty” explanation seems lacking.

I’m guessing that putting the descent engines closer to the rover would have exposed it to extremely high-velocity dust, which would have caused much more abrasion than the normal dust storms and might cause dust infiltration into otherwise protected areas.